• Review of Culture and Economy
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.175-196
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• 2018

When social disaster which is a phenomenon that causes a big wave to the social members occurs, the members of the society are anxious and show feelings of shame or guilt over behaviors that are against social norms. This sense of guilt is expected to reduce consumption of arts having its luxury and hedonic characteristics. The purpose of this study is to identify the causes of the decline in art consumption at the time of social disasters and we focus on guilt. We hypothesize that guilt for art consumption at the time of social disasters will increase as the tendency toward guilt is higher and the empathy tendency is higher. A result of the questionnaire survey of 286 people shows that the higher the guilt for art consumption in the social disaster situation, the more the art consumption decreased and the guilt changed depending on the degree of personal guilt and sympathy. This study contributes to explaining the decrease of art consumption in a big social phenomenon in recent years.